Microsoft SSE and Google Space

By Exclusive Concepts Blog TeamNovember 27, 2005

Microsoft is set to release a set of RSS extensions that will make previously one-way publishing tools multi-directional. So if I update my calendar, for example, the changes will be fed to the calendars of anyone else I’ve specified. The extensions are called Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE), and Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie explains on his blog how they developed.

The big difference of course is that while Notes is proprietary, SSE is an open standard and Microsoft have released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. And if what many of us are thinking is right, then we should expect to see quite quickly a whole range of new applications that get mashed together to take advantage of the SSE standard, in the same way the RSS has taken off. Yes, this is pretty cool 🙂

Microsoft will also be releasing the XML formats of its upcoming Office 12. While the move seems helpful to customers on the surface, some analysts are suspicious of Microsoft’s motives:

It’s one thing for Microsoft, or any vendor, to have its technology ratified as a standard, but it’s another thing when that vendor actually implements that standard. It’s the tweaks, extensions and “enhancements” for the vendor’s platform that ensures departure from the “official” standard. In the case of Office, which is the de-facto desktop productivity suite, Microsoft has the power to ensure that whatever tweaks it adds also become the de-facto standard. (The Register)

And while Microsoft continues to dominate IT, Google is proving to be a worthy rival. But Bill Gates is confident that Google has not surpassed Microsoft. In a recent Information Week interview, Gates claims that Microsoft has “more than matched the kind of relevance that Google can deliver??? in search.

But Google continues to innovate. Their latest project has them setting up computers at Heathrow Airport where travelers can use the web and check email while they wait for flights. They’re calling it Google Space. It seems like Google is all over the place lately with many unrelated product launches, but their European marketing director explains that everything is part of a larger, coherent strategy:

While it may seem as if Google has its fingers in many pies at the moment, all its products are interlinked… “It all comes back to our core DNA of search,” she said. (BBC News)